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Super Smash Bros games for the Wii U and 3DS were announced earlier this month at E3 2011. The announcement was made prematurely in hopes of recruiting a development staff. Neither game currently have a team dedicated to making the titles. Project Sora's Masahiro Sakurai will be leading the two Super Smash Bros. games but he and his team are busy working on another Nintendo title. "Right now, we're devoting all our manpower to working on Kid Icarus," Sakurai said in Famitsu.

"We've got no plans whatsoever -- we've got two new games out in the open when there's no extra time to work with them at all. It makes me cringe, and I'm not sure it's the smartest thing to make gamers wait for several years, but the early announcement was made chiefly in order to attract new team members."

Keep reading for more from Sakurai.

"Project Sora had intended to make a 3DS Smash Bros. once it had finished up a game on the system and had gotten used to the hardware’s feature set. With the advent of the Wii U, though, we had a choice to make. Iwata asked us if wanted to make the next Smash Bros. on the Wii U or 3DS, and my thought was that we had to go on both platforms.”

Satoru Iwata announced Super Smash Bros during the Nintendo press conference with no trailer, no pictures, and no mention of a time line. The crowd didn't care, it was one of the most cheered-for announcements during the conference. Now that we know the reason for the lack of media was because there are no games to speak of, I imagine there's less cheering.

Turns out Iwata made a similar move for Super Smash Bros. Brawlat E3 2005. There wasn't a development team in place at the time of the announcement. Iwata hoped his friend Sakurai would develop the game. Since he was only a freelance dev at the time, he didn't have a team to take on the game. SSB: Brawl was released in 2008.

I have mixed feelings about this. Is it fair to announce a game that's still in purely a conceptual stage? And more importantly, will I have to wait three years for another Super Smash Bros game?